Facebook, Facebook, über alles…

Buzzfeed

Katie Notopoulos at Buzzfeed published an article on Dec 17, 2019, with the title “Facebook Has Banned Groups That Promote Flesh-Eating Fake Cancer Cures”, stating that

Following a BuzzFeed News report, Facebook has banned several groups that promote and discuss black salve, a dangerous and unproven skin cancer treatment. The banned groups include the two largest, which had respectively around 21,000 and 12,000 members. According to Facebook, the groups were banned not for the rules prohibiting “sensational health claims,” but for violations of Facebook’s rules prohibiting “Violent and Criminal Behavior.”

So it seems that Facebook is quite responsive to that paragon of clickbait sites with cat pictures, Buzzfeed. Big Tech at its worst.

Remember Buzzfeed, by the way? Yes, of course, you do. These are the geniuses who, in 2016, took that piece of hackery from the DNC and their Ukrainian helpers (the “dossier” ) and called it “news”, alleging that Donald Trump was a Russian asset and he had some pee sex in Russia. The whole thing turned into the Russia probe and a good portion of the country had nothing else to talk about for nearly three years. The “dossier” was so bad at the time that even the NY Times and the WaPo wouldn’t touch it.

Katie Notopoulos claims that she is a journalist. I disagree. There are no journalists at Buzzfeed, only partisan hacks and click baiters.

Still, the fact that the people at Facebook are listening to these crackpots says more about the attitudes at FB than anything else.

Facebook, Big Tech monster

Facebook started banning groups and users with political views that didn’t coincide with the opinions of the woke employees at Facebook a while ago. Next, they went after the “vaxxers”, and now it includes every natural treatment these people disagree with.

I’m sure there are many more that I’m unaware of.

Bloodroot, of course, gets special attention. I have a few opinions on why that is the case, but I have no direct evidence, so I’ll just keep that to myself. We seem to have a special place in the black hearts of our Big Tech masters.

Here’s a screenshot that they posted in that article.

Dear Katie has a few more zingers though. Try this one:

At the time of the report just a few weeks ago, the social media giant said that these groups did not violate its community guidelines. A representative for Facebook told BuzzFeed News that they were unable to provide more detail as to why the groups were now found to be in violation of the rules on “violent and criminal behavior.”

So we didn’t violate community policies. They banned us anyway.

Well, what about MeWe?

On one of the remaining black salve groups on Facebook one user asked what had happened to all the other groups. In the comments, people said that the other groups were banned, but that some of the users have migrated over to a platform called MeWe.com, which is a sort of alternative to Facebook groups. MeWe told BuzzFeed News that it would remove the term from search results, but would not ban groups dedicated to black salve discussion, citing the fact that its platform works differently than Facebook in terms of spread and promotion.

This doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence either. Interestingly, neither of the spokespeople for FB or MeWe contacted us about this. Not one word. It’ll be OK for quite a while though, I think.

Here’s the link to the MeWe group and to our own Group on Zenith Herbal.

The Future?

I think that this is largely a political and cultural question. Do these Big Tech media companies continue to enjoy freedom from lawsuits over what people say on their platforms? (Section 230). Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri is asking this question in a more stringent way and is certainly gaining traction and support. https://www.hawley.senate.gov/. Please take the time to see what he’s working on and give him your support.

I figure that these Tech Giants can only be curtailed if they either live up to their agreement to be a platform only and not interfere in content, or be a publisher and push their own agenda. Either way they need to be legally responsible for their content like any other publisher.